Multicore Computing for the Multibody Simulation of Railway Vehicles

This work focuses on a novel approach for the development of real-time (RT) models of railways vehicles. The proposed model, which is referred to a scaled train, is characterized by both a 3D multibody model of the bodies and suspension elements and a wheel-rail contact model, implementing the interaction between train and track. In addition, this work introduces an innovative technique to build up a hybrid Simulink-SimMechanics model whose resolution is distributed among different concurrent threads, exploiting parallel computing capabilities of modern workstations. In particular, the model has been realized in multiple tasks to achieve the best compromise between accuracy and efficiency to meet the typical constraints introduced by the RT implementation. Therefore, the proposed multitasking model has been compiled and uploaded on an electronic multicore platform, suitable for RT testing activities. The performances and the reliability of the proposed multitasking model have been evaluated with respect to a reference singletasking one. Their comparison shows the good performances and reliability of the proposed real-time architecture. The system has been realized through the technical data provided by University of Seville (Spain), where a prototype of the scaled train was developed.